Monday, May 23, 2016

Sin Is Undermining Christ as the Apple of the Father's Eye

God is love. He does not possess love, but love is essentially externalized from Him. This externalization of love from the Father is the eternal generation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Son of God. The Eternal Son of God is loved by the Father from all eternity. All ad intra and ad extra acts of the Father are loving acts towards the Son. All creation was made for the Son.

I believe it was this state of belovedness—this glory—of the Son that incited Satan's sin. Satan desired the glory of the Eternal Son of God as the apple of the Father's eye for himself. He coveted. He was proud enough to believe that he deserved it.

In man, sin is of a similar nature. Pride is widely regarded as the mother sin and the second table of the Decalogue reducible to the sin of covetousness. When Adam sinned, his disobedience was basically a refusal to have the image of the Eternal Son of God glorified in him. He wanted glory for himself.

The Father's wrath against sin is perhaps analogous to a human father's passionate displeasure towards all affronts to his child. The human father is considered a good father if he safeguards the well-being of his child. Remarkably, the archetypal Father safeguarded the Son's glory—His place of esteem—through the plan of redemption.

While Satan and sinful man were scrambling to get glory for themselves, Christ "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:6-11).

The irony of pouring wrath upon the Son if such wrath is predicated upon dishonoring Him is apparent. However, it is ultimately the glory of the Father in the Son that is at stake, and it is embedded in the incomprehensible love and wisdom of the Father in the Covenant of Redemption to redeem His glory in the Son through the humility of the incarnate Son's atoning work. And this pattern is replicated in every child of God. To glorify the Father in the glorification of His Son though humility is the telos of every human being—in fact, of all creation.

"Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him." (Ps. 2:12)

Get in league with the Boss' Son. Your eternal well-being depends on it.